


Beautiful

by Anonymous



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Moriarty is sane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful

He isn't mad.

Oh, he's been told he is, often by some boring little insect who thought some stab at defiance at the end of their little life would make all the difference. He's heard the rumours, when he delves into the underbelly of the Deep Web listening, putting his name in the right ears. "Mad as a spoon," or more clearly, "Don't fuck with the lunatic." And he smiles.

Jim Moriarty is sane. He is the sanest human to have ever walked the Earth. He can see all of it. All. Of. It. Every subterfuge. Every lie. Every under the table deal, every greased handshake, every fat politician who grinned through signing a paper ordering the rape and torture and murder of children.

It's like patterns. Humans are patterns, Fibonacci sequences of filth. The truth of sunlight dappling through leaves onto pavement has the same pristine order as bullets flying from an extremist's automatic rifle, if you're not stupid. Cut down a branch here, pay a man to shoot the right woman there, and the pattern changes to please the beholder. Composers use violins to create masterpieces. Jim Moriarty knows the right pieces to move on his instrument to draw out finely-tuned screams.

Because it's all pointless.

Beauty and truth and shit and death, they're all so BORING, so the same. Once you know how to make prime ministers drip urine on their own shoes, once you see where the levers are to open every bank vault in the world, once you can look into the minds of the scientists who make the smart little weapons out of tiny little bugs that burn a human brain alive as the body writhes in its obscene dance ...

Well ...

It's all too EASY, isn't it?

He arranges things for those who can pay, but the money is bog roll. Their stupid, petty needs, and wants: please, help me find a new life somewhere, please, I need to cover up this sin I've committed, please, we wish to kill those disgusting dogs, please. PLEASE. They're not challenges, they're insults, but they keep him in the game.

"Tell your friends. Give them my card." And he smiles.

He's looking for the big challenge. He is waiting, supine upon his throne as indisputable king of the underworld, for the quest. Queens and Presidents aren't likely to give him what he needs; the bigger the crime, the simpler the motives, and simple motives writ big are still BORING. Wars are dull; he's started enough to know.

No, he's waiting for the client with a job that will require him to construct a plan as intricate as a clockwork duck's egg, exquisite and fragile and oh so easy to SMASH if he wants to hear the noise it makes. Because that's all that matters, that's all there is: the game, and the destruction of beautiful things.

The sanest man in the world longs for some great problem to solve.

One day, he is put in touch with a little man wanted by the police for rape and murder. Dull dull dull, but the little man isn't caught out by the police, not those bumbling, ordinary fools, no. The police know who the little man was by the ash left from his cigarette on the heel of his shoe, and the little man has friends who ask for Moriarty's help. They have money. He ignores them. He finds the website of the so-called consulting detective who helped the police.

Sherlock Holmes is the most perfect pattern he has ever seen.

At long, long last, Jim has a beautiful thing to study, and to build plans around. And when he is replete and pleased like a lover emerging from the bed of his beloved, he will break Sherlock just to listen to the peal as he cracks.


End file.
